2019 Winners! 2020 Contest is open!

Congratulations to the 2019 Winners!

The 2019 is a wrap and we are on to 2020. But first lets congratulate our big fish of the year from 2019. Congrats to Bryan for catching a nice 40" Muskie and John on the trophy 29.25" Walleye. Both fish were caught on the same trip to Mille Lacs. I was told there were some real nice Smallmouth caught as well. Sounds like an awesome trip.

I also want to shout out a big thanks to everyone for participating. I hope you all will join use for another season. 2020 will be the 10th season of the contest. You can check out the history of the contest HERE.

We have selected the primary and secondary species. Once you get signed up on the Fish Donkey app I will let you know the species for 2020. As always we ask for your commitment to the contest before  knowing the species. If you want to invite friends we ask the same from them. We try to avoid ringers who are only interested in one species.

Good luck this season!

Season Update!

 

We are off and rolling for the 2019 contest and there's already some very nice fish caught. John Mott currently has the lead for secondary species with this 29.25" Walleye caught on May 31 on Mille Lacs! That might be a tough one to beat this year! On the other side of things we have one Musky submitted that stands at 40"

As a reminder all fish are to be submitted through the app. Remember, there is no word of the year this year since we are using the app. The app will only accept live photos and will log the date and time. John's big Walleye happened to be the first fish logged into the app and we had some technical difficulties. The only photos that showed up in the app are photos of him holding the fish. We have been in touch with technical support and the rest of the photos seem to be coming in fine now. The photos did save to his phone so I'll post them here for everyone to see.

I caught a few Walleyes this week and used the app to see how it worked and seemed to be pretty straight forward. If you're having any issues please let me know.

I may do some more updates to this websites throughout the year. Otherwise keep an eye on the app and the Facebook group for updates!

2018 Winners!

 

Congratulations to Matt for the biggest Crappie and John for the biggest Smallmouth Bass catches of 2018!

With 2019 underway we will look to start the 2019 contest. We will need to select a new primary fish, secondary fish and word of the year. As with previous years I'm looking for input on how to improve the contest for the new year. Participation was down a bit in 2018 and I'm wondering if that has to do with the species or just busy lives. I will take it upon myself to give more frequent updates, maybe even if there are no fish to update the leader board. Another thought I had was to maybe run this contest through a Facebook group rather than this blog style website. I think that would promote comments and conversation, plus you could submit your own photos. I'm not sure if everyone is on Facebook though. Please let me know your thoughts or suggestions.

Since ice fishing is well underway I will try to get the new species selected ASAP. As with previous years, once you commit to the contest I will tell you the species and word of the year but I won't post the info for a month or so while we gather participants.

Here are the possibilities for the 2019 primary species, Largemouth/Smallmouth Bass, Walleye, Northern Pike/Muskie. The secondary species possibilities are, Largemouth Bass, Northern Pike, Muskie, Walleye, Crappie. Whichever is selected for the primary fish will be taken out of the running for the secondary fish.

Congrats again to our winners and good luck to everyone in 2019!

New Smallmouth Leader! 20.25"

John Mott caught a nice 20.25" Smallmouth Bass on Mille Lacs over the weekend! The fish weighed in at 4 lbs and 6 oz. You can tell by the second photo why these fish are such strong fighters, look at that giant tail. Compare that to the next Largemouth you catch. 

Also to add is a Josh Foust with a good smallmouth catch. Josh said he didn't measure this one but it's still a nice one to add to the board.

New Crappie Leader! 13.75"

Matt Rabe caught quite a few nice Crappies over the Memorial Day weekend. This was the biggest of them at 13.75" which takes the lead! This fish was caught right off the dock at his cabin in northern Minnesota. I've seen quite a few up shallow over the past week too. Who knows how much longer the shallow bite will last with these warm temps.

Crappie on the Board!

This is not a giant by any means but it's on the board! I caught this while out fishing a local lake with my son. This was caught on a small 3" Keitech swimbait and a 1/8 oz jighead. 

I hope everyone has hit the water by now! Just a reminder to put a tape measure and something with the word on it in your boat. I was actually out on Mille Lacs Monday and caught a really nice smallmouth. The bump board in the photo above doesn't go beyond 16" so I wasn't able to measure it. So remember to get that stuff in the boat!

Good luck all!

2018 Contest Underway!

Here we go!

We are ready to kick off the 2018 Big Fish of the Year Contest! The primary and secondary fish species have been selected and you should have been sent an email with those species listed. I'm going to leave them off the website for now because there are still a few interested people that I'd like to refer to the website but per the idea of the contest I'd like them to commit before knowing the species.

Word of the Year.

The word of the year is supposed to be a random word but we usually pick a category and then ask someone to name something in that category. This year the category was saltwater fish. The fish named was Mahi-mahi which is now the word of the year! Remember to put something with the word "Mahi-mahi" in your boat or tackle box!

Rule Changes

There were a couple of minor rules changes this year. All rules can be found by clicking above for clicking this link. One was how the species is selected. In the past the previous year's species was removed from the lottery selection process. So for example last year's fish species was Walleye, so walleye would be removed from the lottery. This year we decided to include the previous year's fish species but with reduced odds. So this year walleye was included in the lottery but only had half the odds as the other species. We did the same for the secondary species. This gave the odds that we would not have a repeat species but with the possibility it could happen. We felt this was a good option, but I am always interested in feedback if you like this idea or not.

The main rule change this year was to include Wisconsin as a legal fishing for the contest. We have a number of people who have cabins in Wisconsin and we appreciate participation and I just don't really see any downside.

Good luck!

That about wraps things up. Remember we are always looking for more participants in the contest, so if you know anyone interested feel free to pitch them on the idea. Remember we like to keep everyone in the dark on the species until they decide to participate so people don't just cherry pick their favorite species. 

Good luck this season everyone!